Posted on 05/13/2004 4:03:11 PM PDT by JoJo Gunn
BTW - Love your profile! That is too funny!
Let's hope that happens again in 2004!
My free trial expired, I guess I'm lucky I didn't buy the whole package.
Wasn't that a hoot, though?
I don't know if anyone else did, but I sent it to Best of the Web, and they included it, which seemed to have brought the DU'er off it's hangover. In typical fashion, though, another moaned about their site being named wrong.
I've got the DU web page saved somewhere. Need to make a screenshot and post it. Suitable for framing!
"Karmic Relief
Out in the fever swamps of the left, they're really depressed. A pitiful posting on DemocratsUnderground.com is titled "I really need a karmic hug":
Does anyone else?
Please tell me that no matter wha [sic]--we still love each other--the way the freepers [readers of the generally right-wing Free Republic Web site] never can/will. Oh please sweet Jesus please say we do. I am hurting so bad. I know I'll be better once I sober up but goddess, I really believed we'd do better than this."
Actually, I was using the firewall program that became Norton Internet Firewall. Norton bought it back in 1999 or so. It was called "Atguard" and was free and was an outstanding program that is now just a bloated image of what it once was. There are actually still people using the last free Atguard release despite it being 5 years old.
IMO, Norton 2001 Firewall was much more user friendly than the current versions.
Thing is, how would we know if we got the update? I saw nothing on the list with any special notation(s), no popup box, nothing while looking around the options dialogs or the "about" box, nothing. All I know is that Live Update tells me I have everything installed. 
At least you can go to Microsoft's update site and get some kind of a list. Norton could use a lesson from that.
If I find out any more down the road, I'll ping all on this thread.
Not that I know of. I was at Staples the other day and saw Zone Alarm box version for sale so I think they still use the Zone Alarm name.
Anyway, ZoneAlarm (and presumably other good firewalls) should prevent worms from getting into your system, but they are not "virus" programs. I bought the "staples brand" version of a virus program, because I had Mcaffee and didn't like it, and the staples version is actually just their branding of Penguin Platinum anti-virus which is IMHO a better program. And only $29.95 a good price.
On top of that I use a Linksys box.
If one fails the other is a backup.
If you can't or don't want to spend the 100 or so bucks for the hardware box, use Zone Alarm. I've been using it for 3 years and noone has broken into my computer yet.
Don't bother with the pay version unless you are using it for business purposes. For 1 computer at home, the free version is more than adequate.
I promised I'd ping all if I found out any more, such as it is. I still don't know if I've got the update or not. I've gathered from some other forums that Norton's not in high esteem at the moment.
This link is to their advisory, which is something someone else found by digging for it. You'd think it would be on their front page, but....
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2004.05.12.html
Ever since I've posted this thread, what to do with my computer has been on my mind. I've seriously been thinking of wiping her clean, and have been doing backups a good bit of the day just for that reason.
That infernal MS "security" disc came with Etrust's free one year firewall and AV trial. I'm debating on that as well. (Seems I read it's ZoneAlarm rebadged).
You and countless others over the years have said ZoneAlarm is a good one. Until now Norton was okay, but....
Appreciate the comeback. I might be thisclose to listening to all of you. :)
A complete system rebuild (AKA 'root canal')is a hard thing to do.
If you do this, first back up your current computer so that if you don't like the results you can put things back where they were.
Next, gather up all the disks for all programs that you use and all hardware (printers and so on) that you are using.
Post a vanity, "I'm rebuilding my system, pray for me".
Actually I've become quite proficient at it. I've learned to store my downloads and images and cookies and bookmarks and all that, and have a couple of old CD'R boxes with all my programs at the ready too.
You know what I care for least? Not knowing how to save how I've tweaked the toolbars in IE and OE. Themes are easy to save, but not toolbars. The tweaking is kinda boring after a while. Oh well, if I had "Ghost", but then again, it'd have all the Norton stuff I'd have to nuke.
Like a moron I upgraded, and had to dump it. I now use Sygate Personal Firewall - which is also free (and rocks - a couple of weeks ago, I turned it off for about ten minutes because I was having downloading probs unrelated to this product and I was debugging, and lo and behold - I got hit with the sasser worm).
Thanks for the warning. A quick glance of the Google page shows that CPU usage problem goes back to 2002?!
I'd also heard Sygate was a good one. There's one called "Tiny" that some like, don't know much about it.
I obviously have some more studying to do.
Thank ya!
ping
Here.
Thanks for the link.
At first glance Tiny drops down the list.
this happened to me. I was pissed. It took me 3hrs to fix this crap!
Yeah - I was looking at Tiny last year and then checked out Kerio which I liked more, at the time. Haven't been keeping up with personal firewalls lately. With a Linksys and all the reimaging I do - I'm not too concerned with the outgoing stuff.
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